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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23057434">the missing type</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostballoons/pseuds/lostballoons'>lostballoons</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Gothic, Mon - Freeform, Mystery, Nuzlocke Challenge, i'm gay i can use as many commas as i want, sometimes a gal just reads a lot of angela carter and has to write a fanfiction about it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:54:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,081</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23057434</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostballoons/pseuds/lostballoons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"I asked my mother to open the curtains, so I could admire myself better. I am beautiful because I am telling you this story. I am telling you this story because I am beautiful, and thus prone to annihilation."</p>
<p>A young woman travels from the mountains to attend Sandgem Town's historic university. There she meets the mysterious Professor Rowan, and becomes drawn into his strange research.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Nuzlocke Forums Content</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. prologue.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="zw-paragraph">"They wander the earth as if lost," said the Professor, "and yet to all they encounter they inflict profound shock and, so it seems, monitor all the little griefs and joys that follow. Sensing their strange presence, their subject paces; the creature paces behind. Their subject chews at their nails; the creature searches for an object to simulate biting. Or perhaps they truly do bite."--here he glanced sideways at me, the kitchen light against his square glasses cast an unnatural geometry across his fleshy face--"It is as if by inciting deep feeling, they carve a home out of another's heart." </p>
<p class="zw-paragraph">He poured himself another cup of coffee, despite the hour. "And it seems they furnish it with imitation. It's as if we're studying our own ghastly shadows, and yet.."</p>
<p class="zw-paragraph">I smiled, not because he was right but because I knew something that he did not.</p>
<p class="zw-paragraph">Falling quiet, the professor stroked his whiskers. Outside the schoolbells rang and clattered, and the students who laughed merrily in spite of us strolled across the lawn, dabbling in and out of long afternoon shadows. The Professor scowled. The night's business would soon begin. He would lie, and I would bide my time counting the stitches in my sheets until he'd been proven an honest man, a scientific man, and I could pursue our research in blissful peace. I leaned against the basement door behind me, and emptied another sugar into my coffee. I watched the professor; my limbs grew warm, and light. Yes, we would be free of our troubles, and things would return to the way they were before, only better. </p>
<p class="zw-paragraph"><em>And the Professor will never know what I've done</em>. I smiled, and pressed my palm against the basement door. </p>
<p class="zw-paragraph">The Professor set his mug on the counter. At its clang I jumped. </p>
<p class="zw-paragraph">"The hour is drawing near," he said. I turned to leave, yet he caught my arm in his massive palm. <em>He will do me grievous harm</em>, I thought, my chest abuzz like a hive, or rather--<em>this man has saved my life</em>.</p>
<p class="zw-paragraph">"Are you devoted to your work?" The sun cast his eyes blank. "To this question of form and feeling?"</p>
<p class="zw-paragraph">"Yes," I lied. The Professor smiled as if he had been set free. </p>
<p class="zw-paragraph">And he opened the basement door behind me, and he threw me into the dark.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. one.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>how will I survive are we to be estranged?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="zw-paragraph heading0">1. There are men who exist and there are men who should not.</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">2. If there are men who should not exist, then they are either dull shadows of our imagination or they perform a function of the landscape.</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">3. If they perform a function of the landscape, we will spot them from across the canyon or we will continue idly about our work.</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">4. If we spot them from across the canyon, we will wave pleasantly hello or we will descend into vast emptiness to meet the men who should not exist.</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">5. If we meet the men who should not exist, we will marvel in silent terror at their beauty, or we will ask them to profit from it.</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">5. If we kindly ask them to get a fucking job, they will peruse the classifieds or they will resume nonexistence.</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">6. If they resume nonexistence, either we will be alone or we will not.</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">"<em>What the hell</em>?" I muttered, stretching the paper beneath my lamp's feeble glow. My mother had drawn the curtains shut for fear that winter's brilliant dead sheen would induce in me early blindness. I sat at my vanity as if I were the countess of a derelict home. I squinted at the words; they swam in the dark. My mother shuffled behind my reflection like a pale, nervous ghost. </p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">May this professor be unmarried! she murmured. May your eyes still see color when you meet! Oh, Daphne, at least then there would be a purpose to this. My education? I asked her. No, she said, beginning to shake. The distance.</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">Her two hands--patched red from the fire she once lit to drive a man-eating Ursaring from our snow silenced city, veined indigo from an accumulation of grief--dove like swellows past my shoulders' image. They shuffled through my serums and powders, my red bows and ribbons, my collection of fine ink pens. I watched her veins clutch at my tortoiseshell comb; I watched her in the mirror, how her once full lip quivered. She sighed, her hands retreated. My head then tugged backward, and then nodded toward my dim reflection as my mother brushed out my curls, weeping softly as I was now long accustomed to. She chattered in my ear like a nervous songbird--oh, how my hair resembled yours at your age, oh, it has been only us two for so long how will I survive are we to be estranged, oh but my Daphne you are a girl from a frigid place the south will swallow you hot and whole, please reply oh Daphne, I would rather you marry lovelessly and stay near than me suffer your education so far from this home! Shit! she kicked away my Piplup, who pecked dumbly at her ankles. And meanwhile, I studied my assignment.</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">Was I meant to continue the dialogue? Or did the Professor desire an alternative universe, where the reader pursued each path unchosen? (I scanned the page's first line--his name was Rowan. I wondered if it had an ancestral root, if all the men before him had resembled ragged brush and fat, drooping roses.) I chewed my nail; my mother wrestled with my hair. <em>To think your car could arrive at any moment</em>! <em>Each errant sound I mistake for an engine's growl</em>! Her tears wet my neck. <em>Oh my Daphne, I have become shipwrecked</em>! I tapped my pen, I tucked my feet beneath me. Perhaps the Professor Rowan demanded an essay?</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">Do you desire an ending to the story, sir, or would you prefer an alternative telling? I mouthed to my reflection. My lips were plump, and my eyes shone like white-bellied fish through the murk. I asked my mother to open the curtains, so I could admire myself better. I am beautiful because I am telling you this story. I am telling you this story because I am beautiful, and thus prone to annihilation. </p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">The morning sun traced its finger across my cheekbone. My mother gasped; a car engine hummed as if preparing for its concert debut. "That black car--it's here!" she cried out. "Just like the one that took your father--oh Daphne--oh my Daphne!" </p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">I swept up my suitcase, and tucked my Piplup beneath my arm. "George will keep you safe, yes," my mother sniffed, wiping away her tears with her faded shirt sleeve. She patted the dumb creature atop his feathered head. "Or at least he will try. Won't you, George?"</p><p class="zw-paragraph heading0">I couldn't help but laugh. I laughed my way to the black car, I laughed as she waved and cried and I waved and wept back. I laughed as the car pulled out of our gravel drive, and as our gray cottage, with its small garden which had bloomed but once for my father's funeral and then, in the long years that followed, remained on as a tangled silver ghost, capable only of distorting moonlight, disappeared into the vast white. I laughed as we descended the frigid peaks from which I was born, and careened through tight and winding cliffside roads, our wheels slipping and squealing like infants into a nurse's arms. I laughed as the stiff pines gave way to languorous willows, as the ice melted to puddles wide as the Canaclave Bay. I laughed as the morning bloomed into a golden afternoon, and the afternoon softened into twilight's gentle blanket. I laughed as my pretty head nodded forward, and sleep bore white veils over my eyes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. two.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I was truly awake, this I knew, for in my dreams I am always ugly.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I awoke to the honey chirps of insects, &amp; the mating shrieks of birds both of prey and preyed upon. I thought--is this not winter? should you not all be dead, or pronounced missing? And then I felt the now familiar hum of the motor beneath me, and I heard the warm wind lapping like the Sinnoh Sea through the lanky pines and lumbering willows, and I knew everything was right, everything was as it should be. Dawn washed its blue hands of the night; I basked in its indigo hour, in its rhododendrons dyed ocean shades, its rowan brush blue as a diver's lips. Everything was right, everything was possible--and yet, it occurred to me that I might be dreaming, despite George who dreamt soundly against my chest. I might still lay in my frost-strangled bed, my neck smothered by Ursarang furs, and my mother shuffling from room to quiet room, rearranging the dusty portraits on the walls. Still asleep, sleeping still. I called to my driver to check.<br/>
<br/>
"Sir, how far are we from Sandgem?"<br/>
<br/>
"Not far now." He had a voice like something churning. He paused; I heard something slurp. Then a hand extended over the driver's seat, a black travel mug held within it. "Coffee?"<br/>
<br/>
I took a sip, and I gasped. It was cold as a coroner's eye! I sucked in my cheeks, I grimaced. My driver watched my reflection in the rearview mirror. He winked. "I suppose they serve it hot, where you're from."<br/>
<br/>
I passed him back his mug, careful not to graze his thick fingers. "My mother hopes I'll return married," I said.<br/>
<br/>
"Most mothers do."<br/>
<br/>
I yawned, his eyes returned to the road. We fell into a blue silence. I glanced at my face in the mirror--the dawn had rendered my edges soft. In it I became a loose collection of color and curve, as if I were made not from flesh but from small dabs of paint. I tucked my hair behind my ears, I arched my neck. Better, better.<br/>
<br/>
My driver cleared his throat.<br/>
<br/>
"What will you be studying at university?" he asked. The dawn darkened his eyes to dull jewels.<br/>
<br/>
"I'm taking a course in Pokémon evolution," I said, "and a double credit in Kalosian language and culture."<br/>
<br/>
"A romantic, are you?" He grinned at the mirror. I supposed after my long, silent sleep he longed for idle chatter. "But Pokémon evolution--that's with the Professor Rowan, yes?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes."<br/>
<br/>
"My sister's his assistant, says he's a bit of a stodge, and a--well, this is polite company, so I won't say it, but--"<br/>
<br/>
"I won't repeat it," I said, smiling at the glass. "I swear it on my mother."<br/>
<br/>
He sighed. "She says he's a crackpot."<br/>
<br/>
At that I brayed like a donkey!<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, now you'll tell everyone," my driver said sullenly.<br/>
<br/>
"No, no," I said, probably lying--though I could hardly imagine being close enough to another human being to repeat it. Don't look at me with such pity, dear stranger. I am from a place where humans should not exist, and yet in frostbite's embrace we do. Our interactions wear a sheen of disbelief, as if by merely speaking we cheat both nature, and death. We remain quiet; we observe. I watched the driver pick at his ear. I watched the sun creep over the earth's sleeping breast. It blinked its wet lashes, so that the green world outside us glittered with dew. I remained quiet; I marveled. "Not far now," said my driver, and we turned fast down the golden drive.<br/>
<br/>
It was if the trees raised their very limbs to greet us. It was as if we carried with us a fortuitous wind, which caused their branches to gyrate, to dance! Their eager laughter whistled through the car's cracked front window, their leaves like little hands painted our faces green; then they parted and we grew sun-splotched, we became forward-looking, and temporarily golden. I thought again: I must be dreaming. I checked the mirror--my hair still shone, and my cheeks glowed as if I'd been suckled at a goddess's breast. I blinked; the girl in the mirror blinked back. I relaxed into my seat. I was truly awake, this I knew, for in my dreams I am always ugly.<br/>
<br/>
The road curved like a sleeping hip. Our parade of trees grew sparse, and in their absence up sprouted collegiate buildings, some ornate and terraced, some squat and concrete like the backs of lifelong laborers, and others still stood cube-ish and modern, with square panels of bright color and too many windows. Students tunneled between them like ants. Their shoulders drooped beneath the weight of heavy schoolbags, and long nights spent studying. I thought: this place has seen many hands, and as if to answer my thought my driver said, "Gotta love Sandgem. Every nation that wins it gives it a new face."<br/>
<br/>
He gestured with his fat thumb at a castle-like structure, with the snarling visage of a wolf protruding over its heavy red doors. "Galaran. They took the university during the first great war, and instead of hanging their flag like any normal nation, they slapped their god over every doorway they built."<br/>
<br/>
We turned down a narrow street. He pointed at what I thought was a bunker. "The biology lab--grim, right? Unovan. Galar gave them the university after the last big bang. 'Sorry we bombed your capital 'cuz we thought you were siphoning military funds to Kalos, here's a bunch of old books.' Anyway. Always preparing for annihilation, that lot."<br/>
<br/>
We stopped in front of a building that was more glass than brick. The engine purred to a halt. "And here we are," he said after a pause. "Admissions, courtesy of your Snowpointe City architects. I suppose you're always trying to capture as much sun as you can, you poor things."<br/>
<br/>
"I suppose so," I said. My stomach fluttered. Suddenly I felt as if were I to step from the car the south's soft earth would swallow me up, and I would be reduced to something soft, something edible for both the hydrangeas that decorated the lawn and the sauntering students who crossed it.<br/>
<br/>
"Say hi to my sister for me," said my driver. He exited the car and circled around to its trunk, where he retrieved my suitcase. He opened my door; I stared down at the soft dirt. "Her name's Dawn," he said, and I stepped out of the car and into the golden breeze.<br/>
<br/>
****<br/>
<br/>
"Your name?"<br/>
<br/>
"Daphne."<br/>
<br/>
"Your major?"<br/>
<br/>
"Undecided."<br/>
<br/>
"Relic Hall it is, then. Good luck with your marriage."<br/>
<br/>
And the officer handed me my key (it laid heavy as a heart in my palm), and she sent me on my way.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
****<br/>
<br/>
I crossed the lawn in the morning's long sigh, a thickening daze coming over my head. The trees which had once waved hello now seemed all too loud and yet utterly silent. I craved their guiding word; instead they offered a gargle. Crowds ducked past me. I heard raucous laughter; tired groans; a great bell ringing; the thunder of thin-soled sneakers; leaves like little hands shaking; the shriek of a dying bird. I am not dreaming, I am far from home. I stood still for a moment in the center of the lawn. The sun blushed my cheeks. I squeezed my eyes shut. I am not dreaming, I am far from home. My skin felt strange to me, so flushed and spring-warm. George toddled over my feet. I knelt down and scooped him up. A stranger waved hello. I smiled toothlessly back. I began to stride once more across the soft earth. I am not dreaming. I am far from home, and far from home I intend to stay.<br/>
<br/>
A tender breeze swooped at my skirts. Here comes the great wind of knowledge, I thought, touching the pink of my cheek. A sign read 'Relic Hall.' I followed its curved arrow. Tomorrow I would meet the professor, the stodge, the crackpot. I climbed a set of stone stairs. I entered a red door with a wolf watching over its arch. Tomorrow I would ask him privately for first an explanation, then an extension. A day, maybe two, to complete his baffling assignment. I entered a room overlooking the campus's surrounding wood, with the tired branches of a willow moping in its single window. I set my bag upon the narrow bed. Tomorrow I would awake in a golden morning, a distant morning, a morning swelling with possibility. Tomorrow I would meet the professor, and I would ask him how he sleeps at night.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. three.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Have a good semester, love.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I lay awake in the viscous black of night. My blankets scratched my thighs; the moon cast a diver's net over my bed. The silhouette of a creature wriggled within it like a gasping fish. I rolled onto my stomach, and watched its floundering, dark shape from the relative safety of my propped-up elbows. It appeared to be a Zubat. It appeared to be dying.<br/><br/>Yet it did not die.<br/><br/>I watched it squirm--I thought, now this its final breath, and then I thought it again, and yet again, as the creature continued to writhe and flutter its mangled wings. It continued its dying and not dying, its ceaseless macabre shaking; I grew restless, then bored, and rolled onto my back to sleep.<br/><br/>****<br/><br/>The next morning I adorned myself like a princess of old. I wore my mother's opal earrings, and a scarlet taffeta skirt which had belonged to some grandmother I had never met, an ancestral stranger who I considered a relative not because of blood, but because of her refined taste. I applied a coat of red lipstick, then another. I wanted to resemble a politician's daughter--a young woman granted magnetism not just from her beauty but from her proximity to power, which in its formidable combination could command fates cruel and tender alike. For in our strange, beastly society, we humans are acutely aware of our smallness, how shrunken we appear in comparison to the vast creatures that power our trains; practice our medicine; harness great rains; summon deadly drought; twist physics; distort time; reverse gravity. Alone we are nothing. Less than barren dirt. All we gain we earn from proximity. We cradle nature's beasts at our breasts, we pit them against each other--for without their spectacle we are no one but ourselves. We cling to each other as if shipwrecked, marooned in bodies that have granted us thought, but robbed us of a power divine and yet imbued in each other common species which crawls upon this earth. We are only as strong as the creatures who allow us their presence, and, in turn, as the knowledge we have of their workings.<br/><br/>Thus, the professor.<br/><br/>I pinned back my curls. I suppose this is what fascinated me about the man allegedly so dull: he appeared swallowed by his pursuit of nature's most valuable secret. I assumed him, in his proximity, to be a force of nature himself.<br/><br/>I slid my feet into my mules. I scooped George into my book-bag, leaving the top unzipped so he could breathe. I glanced out the window--the Zubat had ceased its convulsions. Now its body trembled and its chest, with all its little desperations, heaved only slightly. I turned my back to the window, so George could see it. "Is it saying something?" I asked him, though I knew the Piplup was stupid and understood nothing. "Has it any final words--perhaps a last will or testament?"<br/><br/>I felt George nestle his feathered head between my shoulder blades. His little wings began to shake.<br/><br/>"There, there," I said, reaching behind my head to scratch where his skull met his spine. "I was only curious, that's all."<br/><br/>The little bird cooed and chirruped. I felt him sigh, and burrow his head deeper among my books. I supposed he'd already forgotten about the dying creature, and was fast approaching a state of dreaming. I scratched his neck once more, then I tightened my bag's straps, and set off for the professor's first lecture.<br/><br/>George and I descended Relic Hall's crooked stairs. I stepped slowly, deliberately, so as not to twist my ankles. I suppose I stepped quietly, too--though that was not so deliberate as it was purely natural. I hailed from a frozen land, where your every footstep feels like a calamitous disturbance. You, like the dead trees, must learn silence.<br/><br/>We walked the golden lawn. The sun drizzled us in honey. My chest lifted and fluttered; my fingertips tingled as if they were submerged in ice. I picked up my step. I thought: <em>this man knows something we do not</em>. I thought: <em>we may be attached for-ever.</em><br/><br/>I will become a bloody stain. I will be a bloody carpet.<br/><br/>I entered his lecture hall. It was stone, and had no windows.<br/><br/>I continued underground.<br/><br/>The lights were dim.<br/><br/>I walked down the center aisle, at my sides students sat at their desks chiaroscuroed and rapt, as if in pews. My eyes transfixed to the stage. He stood in its center. His shape was massive, squarish. A podium concealed his legs; in front of him it appeared miniature, as if it belonged to a porcelain president. His shoulders stretched wide as a warship, yet his labcoat (glowing white despite the dim) hung rumpled as if it were sloughed skin.<br/><br/>The lights flicked on. I was temporarily blind; I ceased to exist.<br/><br/>The Professor Rowan cleared his throat.<br/><br/>"Are we all gathered?" he asked. "I hope the fine weather has not led us all astray..."<br/><br/>The girl behind me yawned. I sat straight as a scalpel's edge. His gaze scanned the crowd. I gripped my chair as if I were seasick. Our eyes met; I shivered, he carried on. I thought: <em>this man's knowledge will do me harm</em>. I thought it and did not care.<br/><br/>The Professor cleared his throat. He began his lecture.<br/><br/>This is what I heard:<br/><br/>"1. THE EARTH IS A VAST ROUND SPHERE WE ARE ITS SMALLEST CITIZENS WHICH IS WHY SOME OF US SHOUT AND OTHERS SAY NOTHING AT ALL. ALL SPEECH IS A PERSONA EVOLVING. ALL I DESIRE IS TO YANK BACK THE CURTAIN. NO, NOT YANK. THAT LACKS DELIBERATION. A VIOLENT ACT VIOLATES THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD EXCEPT WHEN MY WILL SANCTIONS IT. YOU THINK I AM JOKING.<br/><br/>2. ARE YOU HERE DO YOU FEEL HELD BY LANGUAGE?<br/><br/>3. YOU SIT IN A BASIN OF ANNIHILATION. THESE STONE WALLS FEAR THE MARRIAGE OF HUMAN INNOVATION AND POKEMON'S POWER THEY HAVE SEEN THAT UNNATURAL LIGHT--your textbook, page four. I wrote the book I know its heart. In its image: annihilation. THAT SWALLOWING DEAD SPACE OUTSIDE CASTELIA CITY. THE UNOVANS FELT AN EVOLUTION MOST AGAINST NATURE--HOWEVER WHAT WE STUDY HERE IS THE ROOT OF REBIRTH: EVOLUTION. WHY DO SOME CREATURES EVOLVE FROM LOVE SOME FROM VIOLENCE OTHERS THE BLACK OF NIGHT. OTHERS STILL CONSIDER THEMSELVES GEOLOGISTS. AND SOME WOULD SIMPLY LIKE TO BE FLIPPED UPSIDE DOWN. THERE ARE SEVENTEEN TYPES OF THESE MAGNIFICENT BEASTS--<br/><br/>4. And, I suspect, an unknown eighteenth. Something defined by its absence. A missing type."<br/><br/>The girl behind me snorted. I broke from my trance; I whipped around, fast as what I remember of my father's temper. I raised an eyebrow, I hoped to be threatening. She laughed in my face.<br/><br/>"Oh, this is fucking rich," she said. She glanced at my raised brow. She continued to laugh. "What, are you listening to this rubbish? Are you on scholarship or something?"<br/><br/>My cheeks flushed a deep scarlet. From the stage the professor droned on: "5. HOWEVER ITS ABSENCE FASCINATES ONLY FEW, AND I AM NO LONGER INTERESTED IN BEING PAINTED A FOOL. THUS IF YOU WILL FOLLOW ME LIKE LITTLE TUGBOATS BACK TO THE SUBJECT OF EVOLUTION, WE WILL ALL REMAIN SANE, AND HAPPIER...Turn your textbooks to the first page. Here we examine what fuels a fire."<br/><br/>I watched her textbook. It stayed shut, and the open notebook beside it was adorned with elaborate doodles. She drummed her fingers atop it. Her nails were short, but shone with fuchsia polish.<br/><br/>"Would you mind wasting only your own time, please?" I said to her. I turned back around. I felt her gaze at my back.<br/><br/>"Enjoy the bullshit," she said. Her accent was thick, posh Galaran. She leaned forward, and spoke directly into my ear. At her hot breath, I shivered. "You've already got an A, doll. He loves the pretty ones."<br/><br/>Her hair slithered down my shoulder. It was a murky blue. "And in case your mother sent you on a mission, he's already married."<br/><br/>Her breath retreated. I swallowed, tight. The professor dismissed us, yet I heard none of it. I felt suddenly sick, exposed, wan as a creature kept from the sun. Students gathered their books, they shuffled like ghosts around me and yet I sat alone, shipwrecked. I thought of calling my mother. I thought of dropping dead. "Have a good semester, love," said the girl behind me. She tousled my curls; her nails were sharp despite their length. I thought of hitting her.<br/><br/>I heard her sneakers pad away, I heard the heavy doors swing shut.<br/><br/>The air in the hall stood still as if electrified. We were alone. I felt sick and yet sublime--an elated churning twisted my stomach as the professor descended the stage's steps. The lights seemed both impossibly bright and darker than the ocean's floor. <em>He knows something we do not</em>, I thought, and shakily I stood, and made my way to his side.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. A BRIEF CONVERSATION WITH THE PROFESSOR, PT. 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Let me repeat the work's central question: are we alone, or are we not?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"My dear professor," I said, feigning both a confident step and a familial familiarity, "I'm afraid I misunderstood your assignment. I thought perhaps you required an essay, then an alternative telling, and then--well, sir, I brought you nothing at all."</p><p>I swallowed. My palms itched.</p><p>The professor craned his head to look down at me; it appeared a great ordeal. Up close his shoulders had the muscular stiffness of a taxidermied cat. "The assignment," he said after a brief cough, "what did you think of it?"</p><p>"I've just told you, sir. I didn't understand."</p><p>"No, no, that's not what I'm asking." Without the microphone his voice was scratchy, and sounded older than his face belied. "Let me repeat the work's central question: are we alone, or are we not?"</p><p>I looked around us. "We are alone, yes."</p><p>Then he laughed at me. It echoed through the dead hall. "I daresay you slept through my lecture."</p><p>"No, sir, I--"</p><p>"It is as if you temporarily died, and then crawled from your grave to offer up your corpse for science." He laughed once more; I shuddered. I felt as if I stood on quicksand, as if I were sinking, drowning in dirt. "I've worked at this university through three wars, I've met dozens of you. You all wear your mother's face."</p><p>A scarlet flush crept up my throat. "Her intentions are not mine!" I cried; though instinctually I thought my words false, the more I looked at him--at his eyebrows which grew in every unnatural direction, at his hands which crinkled like weathered vellum--the more I felt them to be true, and immutable. I felt George squirm in my bag; I reached behind my head to scratch his skull. I caught the professor's blue gaze. I held it in my hands. "I want to see what you see," I spoke my last honest words. "I want to see that which I do not."</p><p>He smiled. His eye creased to black slits. "Then tonight you must not sleep, and dream only of what you see," he said. He moved past me, and shuffled toward the hall's heavy doors. He paused with his hand on the engraved handle. "And, dear, I saw you speaking with my former assistant, Dawn. Please say hello to her for me?"</p><p>He closed the door behind him. I stood alone in its echo, my cheeks still aflame. Tonight I will not sleep, I thought, though I did not know what I would see--perhaps I'd see dawn, though I would not say hello to the rising sun nor to the ocean-haired woman whose breath felt like a burning. I thought, perhaps I would examine my own shadow. Perhaps I would find it to be a separate Daphne, who danced by moonlight and yanked out her hair by the clumps. At the thought I laughed, and hiked up my bookbag. "Come on, George," I said to my Piplup, though I knew he would not protect me. "Let's see what awaits us in the night!"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. four.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>"how dark" "how quiet" "how foolish"</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I laid like a corpse in the dark, I grew bored of death, I stood, I paced, I picked at my cuticles, I felt the night's hot hands knead my neck, I grew warm, I felt my armpits trickle, I grew restless, I became once more bored, and tired of imitating life I laid down again in my bed. My hair fanned behind me like a bouquet of snakes. Tonight I must not sleep. I held my hand above my face. I examined the natural wrinkles of my knuckles--how gray I became in the moonless night, how like a shadow! I placed my hand on my heart. I thought: Tonight I will see what he has seen. I heard a howl of wind; the willow outside my window, thus disturbed, shook against the glass like a feverish child. I rolled onto my stomach, to better watch its branches dance. And yet there, in the willow's waltzing embrace, trembled the Zubat.</p><p>I propped myself up on my elbows. Somehow it still lived.</p><p>Its body hung heavier, and its mouth quivered only slightly, as if it were a blade of grass in a summer breeze. Its wings lay limp, and fluttered in the passing winds. I was amazed for a moment by its tenacity--how many hours, I thought, had it been suspended between dying and not dying, between some strange after abyss and the willow's branches which wound like twine? I thought perhaps it awaited a miracle of nature--that perhaps it would slip from the willow's deadly grip and by some motherly grace survive the ensuing fall.</p><p>I held my breath. I watched the little creature die.</p><p>I watched its body heave its final shudder. I watched its ghastly machinations grow lax and still; yet in the warm winds it continued to quiver like an abandoned cocoon. I thought blandly, "How sad." and began to turn to my back--</p><p>The creature's dead jaw began to work. My eyes widened; my knuckles grew pale. I felt my heart flee down the stairs. Yet my body laid still and heavy as a cadaver. I watched the creature's tongue wiggle despite its death. Its jaw began to unzip itself, to open impossibly wide and then I saw it--I saw what I should not have seen, what the professor thought he knew and what I soon would assume myself a silent expert--I saw it and it saw me. For a moment I vanished inside it. I felt its image play across my eyes like a videotape. I felt the creature billow past the dead thing's gray teeth. I felt its pointed head brush against the willows. I felt its yellow eyes glow upon me.</p><p>I felt its body which was not a body. I felt it billow like a woman's skirt.</p><p>The creature looked at me; I looked at it.</p><p>"Is this a dream?" I asked it, my lips gray and trembling.</p><p>The creature which was not a creature turned from me. It descended from the Zubat's body, down toward the willow's wandering root.</p><p>My blue eyes watered; I blinked; it vanished.</p><p>I screamed as if murdered.</p><p>I clawed my hands to my mouth. If only I could return the wretched cry to my lungs! Downstairs I heard fellow girl-students begin to stir, to mumble in confusion. The Professor! I thought. Oh, he knows what I have seen! I dashed to my suitcase. I flung my blouses, my silks, my perfumes to the floor. I snatched up my red coat. I tried to button it, but my hands shook like an old widow's. I left it open, and my ribs, open. A missing type--he claimed to know a missing type! I wore my lace nightgown like an admission of guilt--this girl has seen what would drive men mad, she held eyes with it, she felt its touch as soft as fabric.</p><p>I ran for the stairs; George raised his head. He chirped with surprise, he toddled after me. I hurled myself down them. As I ran I tried to remember what my mother had taught me about the wild, about the various beasts which roamed and ruled it. Fire water ground and steel grass and fairy and poison dark and ice and normal and electric rock dragon and fighting and flying psychic and bug and oh I know this hidden piece, I've seen the missing type I've witnessed its death!</p><p>White nightgown and white slippers, blood-red coat and red lips.</p><p>The moonlight blinded me like a bomb. Unseeing I ran through the lawn, past the confusion of buildings and into the wood. I held my hands in front of my face; bushes licked at my arms with sharp tongues. My thoughts rambled together like a mad woman's: "its type is death" "I must speak with the professor surely he'll understand it's urgent" "I am urgent" "its shape" "urgent" "I must tell him how it moved" "its shape" "is it tangible" "or only missing" "which way to the village" "his sleeping bed" "its shape it billowed" "how fast the trees pass" "how dark" "how quiet" "how foolish"</p><p>For I knew not where I was, nor where the faculty made their beds. I panted like a dog. My cheeks burned, my curls stuck to my forehead. The black shapes of trees rose above me as if they were the walls of a cave; their branches quivered silver in the moonlight. A low whistle of wind. The subdued chatter of nocturnal creatures. And myself, apart from them--my nightgown the white stain of daylight. I began to shiver.</p><p>Perhaps the creature would return. Perhaps it would run through me like a sword.</p><p>The snap of a twig--I whipped around, I raised my my hand as if to strike--</p><p>Yet it was only George, toddling through the brush, my mother's comb in his beak. I scooped him up in my arms, and tucked the comb in my pocket.</p><p>"Oh, George, you know I look a fright," I said. My voice sounded strange, and raw. "You're too kind to me. I'll never understand why."</p><p>He cooed, and rested his little head on my shoulder. His love was simple. I began to weep.</p><p>"Oh, George," I said, trembling. "I think I've gone mad. Perhaps I should have ignored the professor, slept through the night... Is this the price of knowing? Not forgetting?"</p><p>The wind had stopped. The wood fell silent. Still, I wept. "I should have married a doctor and stayed stupid! At least I would die rich! Oh, but I am curious, and George, tell me if I'm mad but the creature--though it was devilish I felt it, oh I felt it--!"</p><p>I glanced down at George. The Piplup stared past me, into the black wood. His feathers bristled. His body felt hot. I felt his shape change, and become heavy, as if his bones had been replaced by steel.</p><p>"George?" I whispered. "What do you see?"</p><p>Like a bystander I felt a tender hand lift the hair from my shoulders. I heard George begin to cry and the night become once more alive, howling and beating for blood. I watched my face as white as the moon. I watched my eyes roll, I watched my knees crumple.<br/>I watched what had touched me retreat into the wood, one pale hand stroking the wind, the other pressed to an invisible back--as if it dreamt of a lover's waltz.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. five.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I saw my white hand trace the curve of a tree's trunk, my lips parted as if reciting an ancient poem. Corpse-like, divine. How like a movie, how picturesque!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I awoke in a white room, beneath white sheets, sun-blind and breathless. The ceiling hung low and veined, as if waterlogged, but the vast morning light granted the space a false sense of expansiveness. I blinked slowly, half-expecting the walls to melt into ruffled cedars and pines, and the sun to have been replaced by the moon. Yet the room remained still, and sterile. After a brief struggle I sat up--my legs ached as if they had spent a long while in the cold, and I felt a strange, gentle burn at the base of my skull, where the thing had touched me. I imagined my mother's advice (from when she was younger, still able to imagine killing): "You might have lice, dear. You <em>did</em> spend the night in the wood."--and then, perhaps joking--"We should set your head aflame."<br/><br/>I touched the burning spot. I yelped, and drew my finger back to my mouth. So I had not dreamt its hand--! It had touched me and I was marked, marked, marked!--though with what I had yet to know, yet to understand its tremendous consequence. The white room's walls began to quiver.<br/><br/>Suddenly nauseous, I rolled to my side. Beside my bed was a nightstand, and upon it a silver bell, and a setting of wilted flowers. Had I laid here for days? Had I laid here like an unloved cadaver, my under-eyes mottled violet and my lips pale as a waxen moon? Had I laid here, and in this ghoulish state been observed by medical strangers? And where was dear George, who had seen what I had not? I reached for the bell. My palms were red.<br/><br/><em>Ding</em>!--then the approach of light footsteps, followed by the gentle scratch of a bird's talons against tile. <em>Perhaps I've died</em>, I thought blandly, my arms limp at my sides, <em>and these undertakers will carry me like a dead goddess to my ghostly chariot</em>. <em>I will be carted underground on a bed of other people's bodies</em>. <em>It will be the most important I've ever felt</em>. And then: <em>if you die afraid, do you live on, afraid forevermore</em>? The doorknob began to turn. Another set of footsteps, heavier, and dragging. The knob stopped.<br/><br/>A deep, almost familiar murmur. Something in my stomach twisted.<br/><br/>"What is her condition?"<br/><br/>"Stable, we believe," replied who I assumed to be a nurse.<br/><br/>"And they found her?"<br/><br/>"Crumpled as if shot. The captain of the swim team said she resembled a dead bird, a hunter's bounty." I listened more closely. I loved hearing others' perceptions of myself--no matter how punitive--so long as they found me even the slightest bit fascinating. I pictured myself dangling in the anonymous man's arms. I saw my white hand trace the curve of a tree's trunk, my lips parted as if reciting an ancient poem. Corpse-like, divine. How like a movie, how picturesque! "He said they usually run through the wood ten deep, feet like thunder to scare off the wildlife. Said his boys aren't used to catastrophe, however small."<br/><br/>"Had she any prior condition?" The familiar voice faltered. My hand fluttered to my chest. <em>He's here, he speaks of me</em>! "Perhaps of the stomach or the heart?"<br/><br/>"Not that we have observed." I heard a delighted gasp, and once again my heart raced, though from fear or excitement I was not wise enough to tell.<br/><br/>"Had the swimmer any word on her expression?"<br/><br/>"Terrified, sir."<br/><br/>My hand tightened to a fist.<br/><br/>"Wonderful. Please wish Miss--"<br/><br/>"Daphne F------."<br/><br/>"Daphne F------ my warmest regards, and a speedy recovery. And please, if you would be so kind, give her this."<br/><br/><em>My name in his mouth</em>. Only a day ago I would have died at the sound; I would have had its promise, however impossible, tattooed on my body. His footsteps retreated. I heard the nurse sigh; I, too, deflated. Yet on my lips remained a faint smirk. <em>I have seen what he has not</em>. I sat up in bed, and arranged my curls over my collarbones. I pinched my cheeks, to give them color. I thought, darkly: <em>he yearns for my eyes</em>.<br/><br/>Yet I was not ready to share.<br/><br/>My lip trembled.<br/><br/>The doorknob turned. "What a twat, couldn't even remember her name," muttered the nurse as she entered my white room; she turned toward me, her expression brightened. "Morning, doll. You look like you slept well."<br/><br/>Behind her trailed what I assumed to be George, though he was taller, and somehow more serious in his blank stare. Yet with his molting plumage, which left a downy trail behind his every footstep, and his turned-out toes he retained his old air of ridiculousness. He saw me; he cried out, and waddled to my side.<br/><br/>"Oh, George!" I said, my voice thick. I pressed my palms to his cheeks. I looked into his black eyes. "Oh, I am glad they found us both!"<br/><br/>"He cried for you all night," said the nurse. She grinned; she was missing some teeth. She patted George's head. "Lucky he's cute, ain't he?"<br/><br/>"How long have I been here?" I asked her without looking up.<br/><br/>"Only overnight," she said. I blinked; she appeared to materialize at my bedside; she shone a light in my eyes; "Stick out your tongue"---"Ah!"; she pressed her thumb to my pulse. "Abnormally fast," she said. "Perhaps you should stay, rest for a few more hours."<br/><br/>"No, no thank you," I said. Then I asked her, though I knew the question's answer: "Who was in the hall?"<br/><br/>"The Professor Rowan," she replied, with a wink. She reached into her pocket. "He has come to invite you to dinner."<br/><br/>She handed me a pink card. Its front was blank; I flipped it over. He wrote in a sweeping, sometimes illegible scrawl. I squinted. I discerned this:<br/><br/>"SO IT APPEARS YOU DREAMT WITHOUT SLEEPING, OR PERCHANCE MET THAT WHICH ONLY BLOOMS OUT OF ANOTHER'S ROT? ONLY ON THE LATTER'S CONDITION DO I WRITE YOU THIS NOTE:<br/><br/>HOW WAS YOUR BRUSH WITH DEATH? DID IT INDUCE IN YOU A SUDDEN PHYSICAL RECKONING WITH THE TREMENDOUS? BECAUSE YOU HEEDED MY ADVICE I ASSUME YOU ARE NOT STUPID THAT IS TO SAY YOU'RE WILLING TO DIE FOR A LITTLE EXCITEMENT THAT IS TO SAY YOU HAVE OPENED A SECRET DOOR AND NOW YOU AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTION.<br/><br/>FURTHER INSTRUCTION BECKONS.<br/><br/>TONIGHT WALK PAST THE LECTURE HALL DOWN A SHALLOW HILL PAST THE TECHNOLOGY COMMONS WITH ITS TOWERS COMPOSED OF STACKED GLASS CUBES (here he scribbled in the margin an aside--"as if by simply adding light we will begin to undo physics and learn the geometry of the moon!") THERE YOU WILL FIND IN THE MAUVISH EVENING AN IVY AND BRICK BUILDING UNBURNABLE AND THEREFORE PRE-WAR. YOU WILL FIND ME THREE DOORS DEEP DOWN THE FIRST HALL TO YOUR RIGHT. MY WIFE WILL HAVE PREPARED US DINNER.<br/><br/>THE NURSE TELLS ME YOUR NAME IS DAPHNE.<br/><br/>-- R.<br/><br/>My hands trembled. Despite their quivers, I dismissed the nurse with a steady voice. No, I would not like a cup of coffee. No, don't call my mother. Yes, I am of sound mind, and my eyes see clear as a fresh mountain spring. With some protest she left. My head fell to my hands.<br/><br/>Oh, but I had barely processed the creature alone! Its singular gaze--how out of the Zubat's pathetic death it had come billowing like a plume of dramatic smoke! How I had shrieked as if murdered, yet I knew our ghastly contact to be owned only between us, a vicious knowledge tainted by no wise man's lens or an old wives' almanac. Because the creature existed only to me its memory grew rosy, intoxicating, as gorgeous as a plunge into a frozen winter lake, almost like falling in love--such are the moments that follow death, where, I now knew, a fresh spirit rose from the potential for grief.<br/><br/>Yet still the creature existed to me in a glass terrarium--that is to say, it existed without context. It touched my willow's leaves like small hands, it quivered outside my window, it glowed, it descended, it vanished. I thought: <em>the Professor knows where it fits, but I know where its tombstone lies</em>. I smiled. My hands grew still. <em>I don't have to tell him its shape</em>.<br/><br/>I patted George's head. The Prinplup cooed. "Shall we go to dinner?" I asked him, and rose from the white bed.<br/><br/><br/>****<br/><br/><br/>Once again I sat in front of my mirror. I patted blush into my cheeks. I painted my lips red. <em>You will be beautiful</em>, I think, <em>almost glowing, and because you are glowing he will believe anything you say</em>. <em>You are to him a blank book</em>. <em>You are to him a fresh slate for his research, his wise man's ideas</em>.<br/><br/><br/><em>He need not know you have ideas of your own</em>.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. six.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>"We may still turn back," I said to George. "I could court a doctor, or study something average, perhaps accounting. Something mundane--plenty of people live happily like that, without knowing what lurks behind the curtain."--here I twisted a hangnail, and looked unhappily at the Prinplup's blank face--"Or perhaps they all already know, and for their own good choose to ignore it."</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>George and I crossed the campus lawn at twilight; the hour cast it and its surrounding rhododendrons the purplish shade of moonlit roses; they rustled in the warm breeze, they appeared to dance. Tangoing grass tickled my ankles. Above us swarms of Starly flocked from beech to beech, their movements neatly synchronized, as if they were an amorphous school of fish. How strange it was to see a world so vibrant, so perpetually alive, and yet to march like a secret mourner to the scholar of the dead! All around us mingled signs of life as it should be. Students splayed themselves across the grass; some sat in small groups, no doubt debating the merits of philosophy, or the intricacies of young love; some laid fat textbooks over their tired eyes; and others still tussled with their Pokémon, yelping and hooting along with the songbirds and owls.<br/><br/>Among these playful students I spotted a familiar splash of blue hair, wrestling on the edge of the lawn with a creature that resembled a premature flower. My heart pounded, I pretended not to see her. Yet still she waved at me; I scowled. I attempted to float on as a sleepwalker does, like a moving function of a landscape--as if I were as constant as the morning fogs and yet possessed by the immutable purpose of a dream, as only someone who knows they are asleep may possess. Yet still she called out to me. "Oi! Princess!" she beckoned to me with a pink-nailed hand.<br/><br/>I tried to look past her. She rolled her eyes with such gusto that for a moment I thought we were in a play. "Where you off to?" she asked me loudly.<br/><br/>"I have an engagement."<br/><br/>"Ooh--cheeky, aren't you? Is it to the heir to the toaster strudel fortune?"<br/><br/>I scoffed.<br/><br/>She flopped back down on the lawn. For the first time I fully saw her face--though the twilight blended her features into a dull rosy portrait I saw that she was plain, high-browed, in possession of a chin whose sharp point I thought could surely cut stone, and sturdy legs which suggested she practiced gymnastics rather than ballroom dance. I found all of her to be ordinary, and utterly inelegant--all of her except for her eyes, whose icy gaze pierced through the dark like a cat's. In their thrall I paused my march. "I'm going to dinner," I said.<br/><br/>"So soon after your brush with death?" She grinned. My eyes fluttered. "Don't look so startled, love. Words travels quick round here. If you wanted privacy, you should have gone to public school."<br/><br/>The creature beside her let out a strange hiss, like the sound of a deflating balloon. "There, there, Jack," she said. "We'll be back to playtime soon. Budews, man. Who would've thought a houseplant would be so high maintenance?"<br/><br/>My palms itched. I felt the daylight's rapid recession; the sky above us deepened, and grew vast. Little stars dotted its canvas like a map of lost ships. I felt the minutes dwindling by; I saw the professor shuffling his knowledge about his desk, picking at his wife's gorgeous meal; I saw him awaiting my presence with academic excitement--for my very presence had been made extraordinary by my contact with the creature, and with the thing in the wood, and thus I became in myself an anthropological tool for his research. I saw him wait. I saw him grow bored despite his interest. I saw him trudging home, and leaving my memory in a vacuum.<br/><br/>"So," Dawn said. "Who are you going to dinner with?"<br/><br/>I swallowed.<br/><br/>"Ah."<br/><br/>I turned to go. "I'm running late," I said--<br/><br/>"Tomorrow," said Dawn. She drummed her fingers on her cheeks. "Meet me on the lawn for lunch? We need to have a real chat."<br/><br/>I felt the minutes press like a hand into my back. "Sure, sure," I said hurriedly, and rushed away, down the shallow hill, before she had a chance to respond. I crossed the technology commons. At dusk its cubed towers appeared to fade into the deepening night. They cast a shadowy gingham across my path. <em>Perhaps she knows something more of him,</em> I thought. I saw her thin face, scrunching. Then, alternating: <em>it is everything it means nothing she has lived some version of my future</em>.<br/><br/><em>Yet she thinks he's a fraud</em>! I wrung my hands. I pushed this thought to the back of my mind, and shuffled down the mauvish hill...<br/><br/>At its base was an ivy and brick building, shrouded in the shade of both earth and the encroaching wood. It stood two stories tall, yet beside the hill it appeared stout, and quite alone. Apart from the night's activity it seemed impossibly still--as if in its old age it repelled all forms of nocturnal life. Its windows, their blinds all drawn shut, peered down at me with veiled eyes. A cold chill licked at the breeze; I shivered. "We may still turn back," I said to George. "I could court a doctor, or study something average, perhaps accounting. Something mundane--plenty of people live happily like that, without knowing what lurks behind the curtain."--here I twisted a hangnail, and looked unhappily at the Prinplup's blank face--"Or perhaps they all already know, and for their own good choose to ignore it."<br/><br/>I tickled George's chin. "Well, should we trot on home?" I watched his beady eyes for an answer. He blinked. Though he was taller and no doubt stronger, he remained utterly stupid at his core. He toddled toward the building's door; he plunked his head against its frosted glass.<br/><br/>"Alright then," I said to George, and I pushed open the door.<br/><br/>We stepped into the building's mouth. Despite its dour exterior its innards resembled an average of a dozen mediocre college brochures. Its tile floors were stained with decades of dirt. Its ceiling resembled a stippled quilt; the fluorescent lights which hung from it groaned like an irritable stomach. On its walls industrious students had plastered a menagerie of posters and notices--some advertised science fairs, faded theater pamphlets promised revolutionary re-tellings of the few same plays, another poster which still retained its glossy colors publicized a student burlesque. The sizzling scent of roasted torchic wafted through entrance. Following the smell I turned right, down the Professor's hall.<br/><br/>I thought: <em>here there is no turning back</em>.<br/><br/>I thought it, and continued anyway.<br/><br/>I traveled down the hall's desolate throat. I passed one useless door, then another. Then his. I paused in front of it; I read his name on its scuffed silver plaque.<br/><br/>I knocked at his door.<br/><br/>"Come in," said the Professor.<br/><br/>I stepped inside his office, George toddling behind. It was dark but for a single candle lit on the windowsill.<br/><br/>The professor emerged first as a massive, geriatric shadow. I saw the whites of his eyes look up. I blinked; his shape, and the scene, gained some detail.<br/><br/>He sat hunched over his desk, his large hands absently turned the pages of what appeared to be a research report. In front of him sat our place mats and roast dinner, untouched, and behind him, shoveled onto cinder-block bookcases, appeared to be the contents of his desk: scattered quills and spilled ink, framed photographs of other regions' professors, a well-loved stapler, and a mess of loose papers and dusty books. Despite the dark, I attempted to read their titles: "The Medium's Dictionary," "Ingesting Ectoplasm," "Spirituality," and among them one authored by the professor himself--"The Missing Type: The Case for Life After Death."<br/><br/>I felt a prickle at the back of my neck. The Professor watched me; he did not speak.<br/><br/>I swallowed. What confidence I had had retreated into the office's shadowy recesses. Suddenly unsure of our meeting's premise, I felt small, uneasy, like a rodent who has been just noticed by a cat. I tried to think of something clever to say, a sly quip about the lighting, but the only phrase that came to mind was a quote of Dawn's.<br/><br/>"Word travels quick around here," I said in a voice that was not my own.<br/><br/>The Professor smiled; a great sigh of air escaped from my lips. "Well," he said, "it's not every day the swim team stumbles upon a near-corpse on the morning jog. Did the nurse tell you that? That they thought you were dead?"<br/><br/>"No," I said.<br/><br/>"The captain who found you, Barry, said you looked as if you'd seen a ghost. As if you'd died of fright." He watched my eyes. He thinks me still dazzled, I thought. He thinks me a fool. He gestured at the chair in front of him. "Now please, Daphne, take a seat."<br/><br/>And like his fool I sat.<br/><br/>"I'm afraid I was a little dismissive yesterday," he said without apologizing. "You did not strike me as curious, you see--I looked at you and I saw only doe eyes, a bare ring finger. Frankly, I saw a lawsuit begging to happen."<br/><br/>I picked at my hangnail; it bled. "Yet you invite me to a candlelit dinner, catered by your wife."<br/><br/>With one great shoulder he shrugged. "It seemed like a setting you would be comfortable in."<br/><br/>It seemed, rather, that he boasted a poorly concealed flair for the dramatic. I tilted my head, so that my eyes would catch the candlelight. I thought, somewhat nervously: <em>I will control this suggestion of romance, I will lead this dance</em>.<br/><br/><em>I will wring his mind dry</em>.<br/><br/>"Your earrings--they're lovely," said the Professor after a long pause.<br/><br/>I hoped he wasn't flirting with me. Like a wolf I smiled with all my teeth. "They were my mother's."<br/><br/>"Tell me about her: is she dead? Or otherwise widowed?"<br/><br/>I laughed; it sounded like a shattering. The Professor winced.<br/><br/>"May I be frank, sir?" <em>Play coy</em>, <em>play cutting</em>. <em>And leave the creature out of it</em>. I raised my chin. The flames danced on my cheek.<br/><br/>"Of course, Daphne."<br/><br/>"You don't give a damn about my mother."<br/><br/>He chuckled. He stabbed his fork into his roast. "No, I suppose I don't."<br/><br/>"May I continue to be frank?"<br/><br/>"Of course," he said. He chewed his roast for a long moment; he must have reduced it to a pulp. He swallowed, then said, "Shoo with your manners--there's no need to wait for me."<br/><br/>"You know that last night I did not suffer a regular attack of hysterics. You know that I saw something in that wood." I met his gaze. "You want to know what that is."<br/><br/>The light caught on his glasses. I saw myself, in shadow, reflected in them. I watched my eyes in his.<br/><br/>He folded his hands in his lap. On the windowsill the candle jumped. "So, you, Daphne F., admit to witnessing a phenomena yesterday evening?"<br/><br/>"Yes," I said--a slight tremor shook my voice. My cheeks flushed. I hoped he wouldn't see.<br/><br/>He reached into his desk's drawer and retrieved a worn, orange notebook. Colorful tabs protruded from its pages. He selected a pink one, opened the book to it, then clicked his pen upon the table. He looked up at me. His eyes seemed to burn.<br/><br/>"Go on."<br/><br/>I arranged my hair over my shoulders. I bit my lip. The full tale rushed over me like a song: T<em>he glowing eyes like dead stars the body which billowed like a woman's skirt</em>. I thought:<em> I will keep my heart in my chest</em>. I thought: <em>I will offer him a kernel of truth on a ghostly platter</em>. I began. He recorded my every word.<br/><br/>It was late, I said.<br/><br/>Yes yes, he replied.<br/><br/>You told me not to sleep, I said.<br/><br/>Do you blame me?<br/><br/>I tried to be funny. For everything, yes.<br/><br/>Not sleeping I watched the stars from my window, I grew restless, I grew bored. I thought a night walk might do me well.<br/><br/>Strange, for a young woman.<br/><br/>May I be frank again, sir? You have never been a young woman. Some of us are not so shy of the evening air.<br/><br/>I walked through the wood at a brisk pace my darling George at my side my darling and I walked for about a mile, admiring the wildlife. We are from a cold place and thus here we are perpetually fascinated. Your world is a novelty we hardly understand it. We stood in a thicket of beech and magnolia trees. I held George up in my arms, so that he could admire a patch of squirming moss. Suddenly my darling looked past me, stricken. I felt my hair lift from my shoulders.<br/><br/>I crumpled to the ground as if shot.<br/><br/>Did you see it?<br/><br/>As I fainted I saw the edge of the creature, sir--I witnessed the pale curve of its hand.<br/><br/>The Professor sat still as a statue, as if his very blood had been chiseled from ice. Candelight dug deep shadowy groves from his cheeks, making him appear gaunt, skeletal; only his whiskers stirred at his breath. I watched him, appraising him. <em>Struck to stone by a half-truth</em>! I wondered if the full tale would drop him dead. I wondered what sort of creature would crawl from his mouth.<br/><br/>Very slowly he lowered his hands to his lap. The candle simmered low now--it plunged his eyes into dark. The room was still, and too dim. In its grip I sat rapt, as if I were in an intruder in a deep crypt, as if I waited on Juliet's corpse to rise. I watched him sit, quiet.<br/><br/>Despite myself I still wanted him to awe me. I wanted for a moment to cast off Dawn's doubt, to toss my own secret workings aside. I wanted for a moment to believe without thinking--to feel his words once more as rapture.<br/><br/>"Daphne," he said after a long silence. I felt the dust rattle from the air.<br/><br/>I raised my chin.<br/><br/>"Do you believe yourself to be, above all things gorgeous and trivial, curious?"<br/><br/>I nodded. I felt once again that burning at the base of my skull. Instinctually I touched it.<br/><br/>"Do you believe yourself to be suspended above easy disbelief? And that suspension intact, believing me?"<br/><br/>"Yes, yes," I cried, the creature's sordid gaze afire in my heart. I saw its shape growing closer, gaining detail.<br/><br/>"Daphne," he said, and the room grew dimmer. "Are you capable of secrecy?"<br/><br/>"I am," I lied.<br/><br/>Then he leaned back in his chair as if deflating; this I knew, for I heard its long creak. He rested his hands on his stomach. "I believe," he sighed, "that I know what creature touched you last night. I believe in her sleep she mistook you for an absent other-- and in your body she sought its missing shape."<br/><br/>My breath caught in my throat. <em>The deep wood the pale hand my body which crumpled as if shot</em>.<br/><br/>"She?" I asked, my voice a tremor.<br/><br/>The Professor nodded solemnly. "My former assistant," he said. The room's darkness thickened. "And the subject of my current research."<br/><br/>I saw her sharp-chinned face, swimming in lavender shadow. I saw it turn toward me. I saw my body crumple as if shot.<br/><br/>The Professor smiled; the whites of his teeth flashed in the dark. "I suspect you know her," he said, watching me.<br/><br/>My palms itched terribly. "Yes," I said. My voice was strange, and raw. "Tomorrow we are going to lunch."</p>
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